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American telecom giant Verizon Wireless hasn’t finished rounding out a potential bid to enter the Canadian market, but Telus Corp. CEO Darren Entwistle has gone on the offensive to keep it from jumping in under the federal rules designed to foster new, fledgling entrants.

Telus isn’t opposed to Verizon making a bid to come in, Entwistle said, but he wants it to be on terms that are fair.

Verizon is reportedly in the market to buy both Wind Mobile and Mobilicity, which were established as “fourth competitors” to Canada’s big three (Telus, Bell Canada and Rogers Communications). Telus itself was blocked from buying Mobilicity.

And under existing rules, Verizon’s presence with the two smaller firms would place it in a position to potentially grab a bigger share of Canada’s next auction of wireless bandwidth.

“All we are asking for, if they do come into Canada, is that we all compete under the same terms and conditions, that we have a level playing field,” Entwistle said during a Sun editorial board meeting Friday.

Verizon signalled its interest in Canada in June by making a reported $700-million bid to buy Wind Mobile, and has since said it is mulling an offer to buy near-insolvent Mobilicity. Both are new companies that the federal government helped get established by setting aside wireless bandwidth for new entrants in the market as a means to foster competition.

To date, Verizon has said its discussions in Canada have been an “exploratory exercise,” with the latest comments coming from company CFO Fran Shammo during Verizon’s last conference call with analysts Thursday.

However, Verizon’s interest has already cost Canada’s wireless carriers. Since the first news of its possible bid for Wind was made public, the shares of Canadian telecoms dropped, wiping out a combined $14.5 billion of their market value between May 22 and June 27, according to Telus’s calculations.

Telus was effectively blocked from buying Mobilicity earlier this year in a $380-million bid when then industry minister Christian Paradis would not allow a transfer of the bandwidth that Mobilicity bought to establish itself before 2014.

The federal government is looking to auction four more blocks of prime bandwidth next January, and, to maintain competition, will allow a foreign new entrant to bid on two blocks while capping the incumbents, Telus, Bell Canada and Rogers Communications, at bidding for one block each.

However, Entwistle said Industry Canada’s rules for the auction were set for start-up companies, such as Wind or Mobilicity, not for one of the biggest incumbent players from an adjacent market that dwarfs all three Canadian incumbents combined on market capitalization and existing subscribers.

“We’ve been told this unequivocally, that the rules were designed to protect new fledgling entrants,” Entwistle said.

For the auction to be fair, Entwistle said, Verizon should be capped at bidding on one block of the new spectrum as well, or the auction should be opened up more by either allowing each party to bid on two blocks, or on as many as they want.

He added that Telus has long argued for Canada to lift all foreign ownership restrictions on Canadian telecommunications companies.

And, he said, Verizon should have to compete to buy struggling players Wind and Mobilicity, since they were established in a process that subsidized the price paid for their bandwidth.

Entwistle’s presentation laid out the industry’s case: that the $420 billion Canada’s incumbent wireless carriers have spent building up the country’s wireless network has provided top-quality service in a market that is challenging to cover over vast distances, difficult topography and small populations.

The Telus presentation used, in part, the OECD’s latest report on the wireless industry’s performance to argue that Canadian companies also deliver top-quality service at prices that are in the middle of the pack among OECD countries, but third cheapest among Canada’s peers in the G7 group of countries.

Entwistle made his case to The Vancouver Sun a day after meeting the editorial boards of the National Post and the Globe and Mail, and with government ministers and federal NDP consumer affairs critic Glenn Thibeault.

He said his preference would have been to lobby the federal ministry of industry first, but Prime Minister Stephen Harper’s cabinet shuffle got in the way, and Telus is running out of time before the process for the next bandwidth auction.

Telus is trying to secure a meeting with new Industry Minister James Moore, who is also B.C.’s senior minister, before the Sept. 17 deadline for companies, potentially including Verizon, to register to take part in the Jan. 17, 2014 auction.

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